Welcome to an usual review made for an unusual game!

Farmyard Chronicles isn't the usual tale of heroes, warriors with strange hairstles and huge swords and wizards... even if wizards are present in this game, but no the protagonists are a pair of sheperds, that work for a group of mages.
The trouble starts when one of the two sheperds tries to cast a teleportation spell with the result that he teleports the animals everywhere! Luckily the wizards are not there at the moment so the two sheperds can still save the day before the magicians come back!

Farmyard Chronicle is a puzzle game made almost esclusively with RTP: we play as the unnamed female sheperdess as she tries to collect the various escaped animals: cows have to be led through some teleportation gates, sheeps have to be stunned before being collected, chickens just need to be kicked (ow!).



The problem is that many areas are locked until you find a key or a way to reach them, and this is where the second sheperd will help: that guy that dabbles in arcane arts (badly, since he is the responsible of the disaster) can create some invaluable items that will prove to be extremely useful, but to do this he needs some arcane spheres that are found around hidden in crates, boxes and chests. There is also one chest that "generates" these spheres as you recover the various animals, anyway besides these artifacts there are also some useful mundane items that can be found around, like a rope and a dog collar. Similarly there are some books found in various bookshelves that give some hints and explanations about what you are supposed to do to catch all the animals (as mentioned before the initial abilities and possibilities are a bit limited, then possibilities and skills will be expanded).

Each room is a puzzle where the sheperdess has to recover the animals taking in account the various behaviours of the animals and making use of the artifacts (luckily exiting and re-entering the rooms will reset the layout, even if the recovered animals will still be rescued!).

The game starts easy and as it progresser it introduces more and more elements. There are also some mini-games (that area that are quite difficult, but after some practice I was able to complete them) like the mine cart travel or the pat in which you have to navigate through a herd of unstoppable sheeps.

Oh remember that there is only one save point inside the barn, that is also the base of operation where it's possible to forge new artifacts, but don't worry since there it's not possible to have a gsme over. When you reach the main room of the castle it's possible to wait for the arrival of the wizards, anyway you can still try to collect all the animals if you aim for the 100% completion.

Farmyard Chronicles is a nice puzzle game, difficulty is well balanced (except the cart section that is pretty challenging, but manageable) with simple RTP graphics and few flaws. I experienced some gliches while playing the game like the character being fixed in one direction or having the screen excessively bright due to a flash stuck, in any case these were simply fixed moving to another room and/or performing some kind of action, so nothing broke my game (even if I guess that with the "teleportation-exchange" staff it's possible to be stuck if you are not careful... not that this happened to me!). In any case these glitches ony happened once each and I'm pretty sure these were due to the limitations of the engine, I wasn't even able to replicate them (yes, I tried!).



The Verdict
Farmyard Chronicles takes a simple engine for rpgs, simple rtp graphics, and makes something rather unusual but still entertaining with them. This is a short but pleasant 2-3 hours game that I'm sure will be a pretty original challenge for most rm2k3 players. Even if I am sure that the jrpg and adventure enthusiast may prefer something different, this is still a well made original game. It encourages exploration and experimentation, offering a decent difficulty and challenge, but at the same time keeping always the system simple and easy.

Considering this and the lack of real big flaws, it gets 4/5, all deserved!